(Musings on Life as a Mom and a Vet)

Mia May Have a Death Wish

Ugh!After last month’s bacon incident, we’ve been extra careful with stuff Mia the lab can get into. However, she’s apparently got a nose for trouble. Mia was downstairs, unattended for all of 15 minutes while I was putting the kids to bed. When I came down the stairs, I saw her scurry away with the guilty face. I went to the living room to investigate, and found some shredded paper and the remnants of a pack of gum.

In case you don’t know: many brands of sugar-free gum contain a sweetener called Xylitol. For whatever reason, this stuff makes dogs develop profound hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and later on rots out their livers. It doesn’t take much gum, and it is often fatal. Is it super creepy to anyone else that we humans are consuming this stuff?

Anyhow, I got out the syringe of Apomorphine (stuff to induce vomiting) that I keep in the freezer for just these occasions so it could thaw. Then I called ASPCA Animal Poison Control (I swear they need to just give me a punch card…10th call is free…).

I had to do a little detective work as the poison control vet needed the brand name of the gum and the wrapper was in slimy pieces. I assembled what I could and Google Image searched using the key words on the brand name I could make out. Thankfully, the gum she got did not contain Xylitol.

Big relief. I re-froze the Apomorphine. I shot my husband a probably less than nice text informing him to be more careful with is gum.

It’s past my bedtime, but I wanted to put this out there as a reminder that sugar-free gum, while good for your teeth is very bad for your dog. FYI.

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2 thoughts on “Mia May Have a Death Wish”

Well, at least there’s one really good thing about Mia, she LOOKS guilty when she’s done something. If she hadn’t, you might have found the slimy remains days later and then worried about when the incident occurred.

Wow, what a scary close call!! I remember that feeling of horror when I came home and saw that pack of xylitol gum and all those empty wrappers. I had no idea how long it had been, and Bayley never looked guilty, she had a die-hard sense of entitlement. When I called the er vet in the middle of the night, they had me use peroxide. It was mortifying, but there was giant wads of gum and, of course more wrappers and minty peroxide. She had gone on quite a sleuth to dig that out of the closet, but she was scrappy. I became even more careful. It’s good to know there is another way to induce vomiting on the fly, thanks for the reminder!